


Run, Boy, Run

by demonsonthemoon



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 05:01:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16780111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonsonthemoon/pseuds/demonsonthemoon
Summary: Edward has no memory of learning how to walk.His first memory is one of running.





	Run, Boy, Run

Edward has no memory of learning how to walk.

His first memory is one of running.

The picture in his mind is of the field behind their house in Resembool. Their old house, not Pinako's. Everything around him felt gigantic, the grass under him stretching into endlessness as his tiny feet galloped over it. There was a moment in the memory in which Ed's body tilted forward and it felt like he was flying.

Logically, Ed knows that he must have fallen. But he doesn't remember the fall, doesn't remember his mother running to pick him up and kiss the pain away. He only remembers the run, the flight, and the green as far as his eyes could see.

That first memory is the only one Edward has in which neither Alphonse nor his mother appears. In a way, it feels like that memory is Ed in his purest essence, it's Ed when no one else is there.

What does it say about him that, left alone, his instinct was still to run? What does it say about him that he has forgotten all about the context of the event, that he cannot tell wether he had been running towards something or away from some danger?

Edward doesn't know. He doesn't want to think about it. He pretends it doesn't matter. He pretends that you can be running towards and from something at the same time, and that you don't have to put another word on it, that you can call it freedom and be done with it.

Edward has been running most of his life in one way or another. He can admit that. Well, maybe not _aloud_ , but he can at least admit it to himself. The feeling of his lungs and muscles burning under the strain of keeping him alive feels as much like home as Alphonse's voice. And isn't that the most defining characteristic about someone? How they make a home for themselves?

Isn't that why he had burned the house his mother had lived in, carved the date in his heart and his watch, and promised himself never to run back to it looking for comfort again?

Most people who don't know him and Al, or who know them only from some facts and not the others, assume that the fire was an act of running away. That it was some sort of exorcism, the destruction of old nightmares.

They don't understand that the scariest ghosts are the ones who ask you to come home to them, the ones you never want to leave. It wasn't nightmares they had burned down that night. It was the sweetest promise Ed had ever been tempted with.

So that's who Edward Elric is, now, just the same as when he was a child. He's someone who keeps on running because that's the only thing that makes him feel like he might be getting anywhere. Because if he stops, he might stop feeling alive as well. He might never move again.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like what I write and you have money to spare, feel free to buy me a coffee here: https://ko-fi.com/meenilevi


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